That’s because both Jon Favreau and Katee Sackhoff lent their voices to tonight’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, “A Friend in Need.” Who knows? Maybe that swirling wormhole Starbuck entered on Battlestar Galactica led her to that Galaxy Far, Far Away, where she donned a suit of Mandalorian armor and became a Death Watch terrorist. Hey, stranger things have happened. A nice Jewish girl from Syosset found herself the inexplicable 14-year-old ruler of Naboo.

As far as Favreau is concerned, “A Friend in Need” proved once again that he needs to spend more time as a cable voice actor and spend less time directing movies like Cowboys & Aliens.

Not only did we have some sci-fi gods on hand in “A Friend in Need” we also had the return of one Lux Bonteri, the puckish rascal—and now apparently “Senator”—who bonded with Ahsoka last season on Raxus Prime, even though he’s a Separatist. Oh, and once again, some of the finest 3D computer animation this side of Pixar.

Holonet News Flash! After a couple years of war, peace talks finally began between the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Alliance. The venue for this interstellar tête-à-tête? Mandalore, whose increasingly marginalized—and mute—Duchess Satine heads the Council of Neutral Systems. Up till this episode, fans thought that the only time peace talks ever took place was on Vjun, six months before the end of the war, when Count Dooku contacted Yoda to say he was tired of fighting, as recounted in the novel Star Wars: Dark Rendezvous. At the time, Dooku seemed sincere about leaving the Sith, but he hightailed it off-planet as soon as Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up, fearing (wrongly) that Yoda had sprung a trap.

These negotiations on Mandalore were decidedly less Force powered, with Ahsoka being the only Jedi in the room, even if the negotiators were equally prickly. I really love that one lispy Separatist with the pixie hair, green skin and purple eyes. Still, if there’s a simmering pot in the Star Wars galaxy, you can rest assured it will be stirred. And, lo, into Satine’s audience chamber burst one Lux Bonteri, piping mad and flinging accusations against Count Dooku. As we saw at the end of the episode “Pursuit of Peace,” Chancellor Palpatine had his minions assassinate the peace-minded Mena Bonteri so no one else in the Republic would find out that there are Separatists who are, you know, less crazy than General Grievous, Asajj Ventress, Riff Tamson, Lok Durd, Wat Tambor, Nute Gunray, et al. But somehow Mena’s orphaned son, Lux, found out that Dooku was behind her death and chose to expose the Separatists at the peace talks—an awkward moment, yes, but at least it spared Padmé from having to answer whether the Republic would ever agree to recognize the legitimacy of the Separatist state.